This evaluation of the Finnish country programmes with Nepal, Nicaragua and Tanzania over the past decade and focused on how anti-poverty development policies and the agents of policy implementation interacted, and influenced each country programme.

National capacity constraints and weakening dialogue with government encouraged donors, including Finland, to revert to the increased use of projects after 2007. Some of these lacked grounding in policy, were not plausibly linked to poverty, and were founded on inadequate dialogue and analysis.

The purpose of the evaluation is to achieve an overall picture of the development activities of DEMO Finland, which begun in 2006 after a pilot phase from 2004, and to draw lessons for the benefit of future planning.